


through the glory of life, I will scatter on the floor

by Hostilitas



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Post-Canon, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) Season 5 Spoilers, Three Years Later, dealing with your emotions as a former fascist dictator, ongoing, wrong hordak has a name now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:47:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24617053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hostilitas/pseuds/Hostilitas
Summary: Greatest privileges could also be the greatest punishments.Hordak had a chance for a new life, free of anger and envy, with someone who truly cared for him by his side.Forgetting most of his past life didn't make it disappear, however.
Relationships: Catra & Entrapta (She-Ra), Entrapta & Hordak & Wrong Hordak, Entrapta & Wrong Hordak, Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Hordak & Wrong Hordak (She-Ra)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	through the glory of life, I will scatter on the floor

Hordak almost forgot the rest of his world when Entrapta came to visit. 

Emphasis on almost. 

He knew that, even if they tried their best to be discreet, there would always be guards on the streets of his house watching him. People to follow him when he went grocery shopping, orders from above for the merchants to never supply him certain items – even if he never ended up asking for them.

The Etherian Union, in their big display of peace and equality, decided against exiling or inflicting any extreme punishment upon him after his painful stint on Beast Island. In a simultaneous display of order and justice, after long-winded arguments in his defense coming from Entrapta, the decision was that Hordak – who was to remain anonymous between all the Prime Clones as far as the population was concerned – would be free… to live on another specific island, under some level of constant surveillance, and completely prohibited of ever stepping foot off of Etheria or coming in contact with any dangerous technology.

Now, three years later, he was one of the many residents of the rebuilt island colony of Andrakhas, way off the coast of Salineas. Civilized enough for freedom. Far enough to keep him away. Alone.

The neighbors avoided him. The only people he talked to were some of the merchants and the newcomers… although the latter group always ended up giving him a wide berth as well. The people were informed of the massive mind-wipe, but they still remembered the Horde. Both under Prime and under Hordak himself.

He stared at his own reflection on the tea kettle, silent. He thought of a moment where seeing himself weak and miserable would instantly trigger violence, tossing and breaking things in anger. It was either imagination or memory, and he could never quite tell between them.

Now, he just stared, before sitting down on the non-dusty dining chair with his cane beside him, waiting for the water to boil. 

A knock on the door pricked his ears up. 

Hordak stood up, grunting as he walked towards the front door, slowly, expecting something decent on the other side of the door. 

\- Greetings, brother! I hope this has been a good day for you!

Hordak grumbled. The mockery. The clone that broke the chains of burden before… no, after… no, before him. Both. Either. Ugh. That didn’t annoy him half as much as the fact that they called him Wrong Hordak.

For a while, at least. Now it was just Horron. A mostly adjusted member of Andrakhan society… who probably hadn’t realized yet that he was also a prisoner there. A better clone who insisted on winking a little too much.

\- What do you want, Horron?

\- Oh, I don’t want anything! I just came to deliver you this letter! You do remember I am in charge of letters, yes, brother? Since you tend to forget things!

Hordak snapped the envelope out of his outstretched hands, scowling as an answer to his beaming smile. Nothing special, as always, he could tell that just from the envelope itself. Hordak tore into it without any real ceremony, reading a boring general notice for Andrakhan citizens about something regarding contributions to a future town project. Whatever. Another piece of paper meant for the fireplace.

\- Yes, I remember who you are. We’re not brothers. Get out. 

His hand moved to close the door, already halfway through the motion when Horron continued.

\- Wait! There’s also something else!

\- What is it? 

A hair tentacle bursted from the street, blowing the door back open before Entrapta’s face appeared from the side.

\- Me! Hi, Hordak! 

Hordak was taken aback by the sudden intrusion, his heart almost jumping out of his chest. He grumbled, his free hand balled up into a fist, shaking. 

\- I came to visit you! Oh, I have some truly great news, and I have so much to tell you, and I can’t wait to get your take on my new inventions! They didn’t let me bring most of them, but I’d love to show you the schematics! Remember that ion-based engine we were studying before the trial? I made a lot of progress--

Entrapta kept talking as her hair skipped her inside the house, lugging a suitcase. Hordak soon couldn’t quite hear what she was saying anymore when she entered one of the back rooms, even though she clearly hadn’t stopped talking.

\- The other thing was that Princess Entrapta is here to visit you!

Hordak took a long, slow breath before slamming the door in Horron’s face. Even with a flashy, spotty memory, he still knew anger. 

\- ENTRAPTA!

\- Yeah?

Startling him by appearing right behind his back, Hordak spun around on his ankles, already exhausted from her sudden visit. 

He stared at her, annoyed and angry. She stared back, happy and oblivious. All as it were.

Hordak broke the half-minute of silence, after feeling his anger mellow out. Entrapta usually waited for him to resume speaking after these outbursts, and he didn’t really understand why. Hordak blinked slowly, taking a deep breath before speaking again.

\- … Do you want some tea?

\- I’d love some tea, Hordak!

\- ...Okay.

\- Okay!

Entrapta disappeared back into the house, happy to see Hordak controlling his anger better and better every time she came to visit.

Hordak stared at his reflection on the kettle again, after preparing two cups of green tea, one with way more sugar cubes than he preferred.

Every outburst, no matter how small, made him consider how he would feel if Prime hadn’t wiped his mind. Whether he’d feel better or worse. How some details would just remain lost forever. How some others would keep reappearing no matter how hard he wished to forget them. 

Living with his past mistakes would be tough, considering that he wouldn’t know what a good portion of them were. 

Hopefully, having Entrapta around would help him remember the good things.

\- No, this reaction here won’t work. You have to place it a little further down the chain, or the compound will come out weak.

He pointed out a piece of the schematic, as they pored over the plans, new and old, that Entrapta laid on the coffee table, properly forcing the now-empty teacups to rest over the carpet they were sitting on, cross-legged beside each other.

\- Ooooh, yeah… you’re right… ah, I wish Mermista hadn’t confiscated all my chemistry sets on the way here, or we could test it right now! Let me write that down… 

Hordak stifled a chuckle, observing her enthusiasm as the hair-fingers typed away on her keypad. Entrapta always captivated him with her intensity. How she threw herself fully into projects and refused to come back up until they were either done or became impossible to continue. That incredible talent, as well as the inevitable smile at the end of a project, whether it went well or not, were what enraptured him on those long nights experimenting with First Ones tech, when they were trying to… to open a portal…

\- You, ah… you’re welcome, Entrapta...

\- Oh, you were always way better at chemistry than me! I’m glad that didn’t end up wiped out!

His expression soured as the half-memories flashed by. 

The rage. The destruction. The hate. Both his and from the image that Prime left on his mind. 

Everything to remind him of what he really was. Something between the shadows of two angry conquerors. 

\- … Wait, sorry, Hordak, I didn’t mean to mention that…

Entrapta took a while to notice his complete silence as she took notes. It came faster this time, though. Noticing her mistake. Scorpia and Perfuma were helping her be a little more... present, so to speak.

By the time she turned to face him, Hordak was already lost in thought, his eyes glazed over the blueprint in front of him, his lips hanging slightly open, being bombarded by the flashes of anger. An anger that he didn’t want, an anger that didn’t even belong to him. His fists, balled up over his lap, started to shake. 

\- Hey! Hey. Hordak. Hordak?

His senses didn’t come back to him immediately. 

But, after Entrapta placed her hands over his, holding them tenderly and rubbing her thumbs up and down his fingers, he felt the anger dissippating. Both the bitter and the frustrated selves melting away slowly, going back to their shadows.

\- What?

\- Are you okay there? Sorry.

\- … I am. Yes. What were we talking about…? The end of the reaction…?

Entrapta kept quiet. Something rare, as she did want to get immediately back into their project and ping-pong new ideas back and forth. Maybe over a second serving of tea. She wasn’t really sure of what new-fangled cooking method Hordak was using, but his tea always came out much better than anyone else who ever tried to serve her tea. 

\- Uh… yeah, the end of the metabolic reaction…

She looked down, into their hands, as Hordak moved one of his over hers, gently touching the back with his soft fingers. Something she never mentioned to anyone else, or even took notes about, was that Hordak was the only Prime clone she’d ever studied with… soft hands. 

\- ...Anyway! Well… Back to it! 

Entrapta beamed a smile after shooting her face up and retracting her hands towards the table, even if a lot slower than her usual jittery self would.

He agreed on going back to work. Work made him breathe a little easier. Work with Entrapta by his side made him breathe a lot easier.

She wouldn’t stay long. A couple of days, only. Entrapta was still a princess, and more than that, she was a key member of the Union as Master of Sciences. Hordak knew that the long months between her visits weren’t motivated only by the Union trying to keep them from making a new dimensional bomb or sending half of Etheria to some parallel alternate universe. They almost destroyed the world once, after all. Even if Hordak didn’t quite remember it anymore.

One item he knew he couldn’t buy were newspapers. The vendors let him look over the first pages, but nothing more. Most Horde clones weren’t allowed. Not yet. And so, one of the best parts of Entrapta’s visits was finding out the new scientific discoveries all around the universe. The stars were back. All the planets Horde Prime conquered were now… mostly free. Entrapta had even visited some of them already, much to his jealousy.

She didn’t talk about politics a lot, but he didn’t mind. It was better to not know. The words “rebuilding” and “kingdom” and “Bright Moon”, among others, solicited some unpleasant involuntary reactions. 

Hordak cooked for them, and tried to bake cakes as tiny as possibly, while she rambled over her new formulas, and new findings, and all the data, just sooo much new data. She got better at staying on topic. He got better at cooking dishes that Entrapta quickly found out were her new favorites. 

It was one of the rare somewhat awkward visits, though. Hordak couldn’t stop thinking about the very first thing she said, as the days went by. How none of the things she had told him so far were anywhere close to being “truly great news”, and only someone far less perceptive would believe that Entrapta said anything without meaning it. 

\- So! I ran the numbers, re-ran them through Emily, and if the prediction model is correct, we can raise the yield of the new hydroponics candidate by almost… TWENTY percent! Twenty-one, actually. Twenty-one and a half. No, a quarter.

\- … Entrapta.

Hearing Hordak call her name should be par on course by now, but Entrapta always felt a little nervous about it.

She kinda wished that emotion was a little less complex. Numbers and facts, she could understand. The feelings triggered by remembering the way he used to call her back in the Fright Zone, on the other hand...

Science was easy. Realizing that being called out of her mind when he said her name softly, delicately, made her expect something was… well, it was something, but it certainly wasn’t easy.

\- Uh… Yes, Hordak?

\- You’ve clearly been avoiding talking to me about something the entire time you’ve been here, and I imagine it has something to do with the “truly great news” you mentioned once when you arrived and then never again.

\- Oh. Yeah. That.

Worry.

Hordak stared as Entrapta continued to look towards the schematics on the coffee table, silent.

Figuring out the inner maze of her ideas was a fool’s errand most of the time, but he could tell the regular silences from the weird ones. This was a weird one. He wanted to know the big news, but she didn’t really want to tell him.

\- Uuuh. I don’t know if you remember, but I mentioned during the last visit that Glimmer was planning this big reunion between the princesses, right? 

\- I think I remember, yes.

\- Well, it was a reunion for all the members of the Union to get their affairs in order together, and I… uh, one of… one of the things that I brought… to the reunion, was that…

Hordak grew tired of her stuttering, sometimes. It was stronger than him.

\- Entrapta, spit it out already. Did… the Princesses decide anything else about me? Or you?

\- I mentioned you and the princesses considered reviewing the agreement to keep you here and you’ve been very behaved the past three years so Glimmer said that maybe possibly in a few months after the princesses change a couple of things in my new castle you could come live with me!

Given the lack of a smile, Hordak couldn’t quite tell if the rapid-fire of her words was enthusiastic or nervous. And he certainly wasn’t sufficiently in touch with his own feelings to consider that maybe it was both.

\- … Live… live with you…?

\- Uh… yeah, you, well...and Wrong Hord-- Horron, and Emily… and I suppose all the castle workers too…

\- You want me to come live with you?

Now it was her turn to look confused and have trouble decyphering his expression of surprise.

It wasn’t a particularly difficult cypher. It just hurt to accept that Hordak might not have been in some prison or far, far away, but being stuck in Andrakha surrounded by people who, at best, didn’t really give two shits about him, wasn’t easy either.

It was what Perfuma told her, after the reunion. The long talk she received that even though the princesses still felt a little iffy about it, they’d trust Entrapta with both the decision and the responsibilities that came with it. Which included keeping in mind that confusion, anger, rejection and trauma were always going to be in Hordak’s baggage. 

\- Of course I want you to come live with me, you’re my… lab partner…

A pair of words that, after a certain conversation with Scorpia, made Entrapta turn away and blush slightly.

Over three years were under their belt now, and it would be a lie if either of them said that their occasional visits always felt way too short, or that their distance was way too large.

\- That is, of course, if you uh… want to, Hordak, but they said it would be okay, as long as we followed a few rules. Primarily involving not blowing anything up. I tried to tell them about the nature of explosions, and that working with new tech means you sometimes overload a capacitor or ten even if you’re not messing with military technology, and how I can’t really promise that because maybe there will be a day where watching how reagents behave under the heat and pressure of an explosion is going to be necessary, but they didn’t even listen, and let me tell you, I really tried to convince--

\- Entrapta. I… would really like that.

Dead on her tracks, again, Entrapta disengaged from her sudden ramble into an even harder blush. The tips of her hair were on the absolute fritz under the table, fidgeting nonstop against each other. 

\- They really agreed to it? I thought they still deemed me… dangerous.

\- Oh, they still do! That was their justification for the rules, including the “no explosions” rule!

Hordak felt exhausted, sometimes, of the rollercoaster of emotions his life had become now. Being unstable was one thing, but hearing his favorite person confirm his fears that he was still haunted for a past he didn’t even quite remember… that stung.

\- I… mean… sorry, Hordak, I mean that they do, kind of, but they know that you haven’t hurt anyone anymore… and… yeah.

A yeah that stunted an attempt of telling him a little bit more about the meeting. She didn’t need to tell him everything. He didn’t really want to hear, either.

Hordak insistently wished he had forgotten more. Then, he wouldn’t have to keep imagining just how bad people talked about him behind his back.

\- … So. We can really do this?

\- We can. In a few months. When I come to visit again, you can come back then… with me.

They looked into each other’s eyes, quietly.

Hordak smiled. A weak, but genuine, happy smile, sure in his heart that Entrapta wouldn’t leave him behind. And he wouldn’t leave her behind either. 

\- Alright. 

He held her hand to punctuate his phrase. Hordak still didn’t have a lot of practice actually saying thank you. 

Entrapta smiled back, happy to be sure about a correct decision, and of the fact that she wasn’t going to be alone anymore.

They invited each other back to the schematics. There was still a lot of work ahead of them. Cares melted away, being transformed back into deep concentration over (mostly) non-explosive ideas, theories, circuits and programs. Deep enough for them to almost not notice how long it took for them to let go of each other’s hands.

Emphasis on almost.

**Author's Note:**

> you know how fandoms every once in a while have morality discussions over whether or not people should draw/write certain things? i had one of those discussions with myself over emotionally rehabilitating a fascist. probably wouldn't have written this if hordak wasn't mind-wiped. thank you noelle for fucking up this garbage man
> 
> i promise that THIS one isn't the setup to an orgy. probably
> 
> second chapter coming as soon as i finish editing it


End file.
